Defendants in classic car theft plead guilty

Thursday

Mar 14, 2013 at 7:00 PMMar 14, 2013 at 8:26 PM

By Thomas Caywood TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

The saga of the purloined purple hot rod, which pitted a lone muscle car enthusiast against a mega-bank with more than $2 trillion in assets, ended this afternoon in a Main Street courtroom, where three New Hampshire men pleaded guilty to reduced charges of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.

The car in question, a classic 1973 Dodge Challenger that had been restored into a “plum crazy” purple hot rod by a Worcester man and his son, was taken last March from a Burncoat home the day after a Bank of America subcontractor had been there to winterize and secure the house.

The owner of the car, Aaron Dahrooge of Worcester, had stored the Challenger for the winter in his deceased mother's garage. Bank of America was in the process of foreclosing on the property, but Mr. Dahrooge had legal control of the house in the meantime as the executor of his mother's estate.

Neighbors told Mr. Dahrooge that workers who had been at the vacant house to secure and winterize it on behalf of Bank of America returned the next day with a trailer and hauled away his prized Challenger.

Mr. Dahrooge reported the car stolen to police and then contacted the North Carolina-based bank to find out the name of the company that had been hired to secure the house. When bank officials refused to disclose the name of the contractor, Mr. Dahrooge went to the news media to tell his story.

Five months later, in August, police in Manchester, N.H., found the car stashed in a detached garage. It was a bit battered, with a blown transmission and rear tires scorched bald by untold burnouts, but the classic American muscle car had not been stripped to the frame as Mr. Dahrooge feared.

New Hampshire police arrested the Manchester men, Patrick Peryer, 23, and Kurtis Lavigne, 28, on Massachusetts warrants for receiving a stolen motor vehicle. A third Manchester man, Steven Montanez, 36, owner of the property company hired to secure the house, was later charged with motor vehicle larceny.

The accounts the three men gave to Worcester police were complicated and contradictory in parts, as evidenced by the fact that it took Assistant District Attorney John A. O'Leary more than 10 minutes to lay out the basic facts of the case in court today. But all three defendants were in agreement that they wished to plead guilty to the lesser charge of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.

Each was sentenced to a year in jail, but the sentences were suspended to a year of probation. Mr. Peryer and Mr. Lavigne initially spent several weeks in jail after their arrests last summer.

The information that Mr. Dahrooge had fought so hard to pry out of Bank of America is now a matter of public record.

The foreclosure subcontractor that went to his late mother's home a year ago was JRM Properties, owned by Mr. Montanez. JRM Properties, which has since gone out of business, in turn worked for Bank of America's foreclosure winterization vendor Homestead Field Services LLC of Cicero, N.Y.

In August, Mr. Dahrooge's David vs. Goliath tussle with Bank of America prompted the company to temporarily stop doing business with Homestead until the vendor could verify that all of its employees and subcontractors have up-to-date background checks.